How do we approach the future so our kids etc have a decent chance at life

[spacesailor]

If you Don,t want to cull  the old !. Then you have to Cull the young.

Those that Have contributed  to our world v those New to our world, & haven't made any impact at all, 

SO won't be missed on the grand scale of things.

Many will miss me when that time comes. Two begot, Four, begot, fifteen, begot, seventeen, and counting.

Big party !. And the guest of honor gets nothing, but dirt in the face. LoL

spacesailor

[Dax]

3 hours ago, octave said:

 I take the point about lifestyle but what has happened in many cases is that people with poor lifestyles do not necessarily die particularly young.

What we have to remember is, our generation and the generations before us, didn't have chemically saturated denatured foods, it was mostly fresh and uncontaminated.

 

Today from the seeding to the plate, consists of constant chemical use. The same for meats, generations before the 1960's, had pure meat, today all the meat you buy has been chemically and antibiotic saturated from the paddock, or disgusting feedlots right through butchering then cooking. Add people microwave and use Teflon and aluminium cooking utensils, as well everything you buy has heaps of dairies in all foods and those dairies come from cows fed on chemical feed, heaps of antibiotics and paddocks sprayed and chemically treated.

 

It's a massive difference compared to previous generations. The big problem with previous generations, was hygiene as all the food was clean and uncontaminated. Today, it's chemically saturated world, not natural in any way and it appears that life spans are longer but look back through history, people did live to reasonable ages, all my grand parents and parents lived into their 80-90's, riddled with arthritis most, as they indulged in lots of dairies.

[octave]

Dax are you saying that the life expectancy figures are false?    

[Dax]

2 minutes ago, octave said:

Dax are you saying that the life expectancy figures are false? 

No with clarifications, we live in a very ideologically corrupt world, what we are told and what is fact, are very different. I'm going by what I see in life and the ages most people seem to die around, we have much better hygiene, which has reduced the death tolls and diseases of the past.

 

Studying history we find large numbers of people lived well into their 70-80's and some into their 90's, which skews the figures to makes it look like we are living longer. When the facts may well be, we have got rid of most of the hygiene health problems and replaced them with other problems associated with bad diet and that takes a bit longer to have an effect, unlike bad hygiene where disease thrives. It was only in the late 19th century that sewers were introduced, I remember being overseas in the 1960's and they still had open sewers everywhere. Today that is rare except in very impoverished places and their death tolls are high

[octave]

Whilst it is true that averages are dragged down by infant mortality, it is true that more people live longer.    Starting at the beginning infant mortality has improved markedly. In past generations it was not unusual to lose a child and or the mother.  Look up Ignaz Semmelweis,    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis he realized in the mid 1800s that simply getting doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies greatly reduced what used to be known as birth fever which usually killed the mother and baby.  Come to think of it my own son was born premature and in earlier times may not have survived without oxygen and high tech care, he is now a healthy 30 year old.

 

Penicillin is said to have said approx. 200 million lives.  Many of us have had bacterial infections that in the past could have been fatal without antibiotics.   In my parents childhood it was common for children to die from infectious diseases that we don't have to worry about now. 

 

Treatments for cancer and heart disease mean that people are more likely to survive or live longer.    I personally have a very sophisticated pacemaker in my chest for an arrhythmia, this wasn't possible not that long ago.   AIDS used to be fatal but now whilst still a serious disease it is manageable.  People used to die form a tooth abscesses.    My father had a cardiac bypass at 67 and went on to live to 92, 

 

Add to this safer cars and workplaces and fewer large wars.

 

Of course good quality food is important.  Funny though I don't remember any organic vege markets when I was a child. 

 

In terms of population the point is that more of us are likely to survive our birth and childhood (especially in the developed world)  We are less likely to die at work in a mine collapse or other accident. if we have a car accident we are more likely to survive due to safer cars and quicker medical attention (mobile pheons to call for help , helicopters etc.)   We may be more likely to  suffer diseases of wealth but we are also likely to receive better health care.    Less of us smoke or work with asbestos or other dangerous substances.

 

Our population is getting older on average indeed in Australia and many other countries we reproduce at less than the replacement rate.   

 

The problem with anecdotes is that they don't really tell you much.  

[Bruce Tuncks]

IF the aging of the populace is a problem ( I think its nonsense) then why is youth unemployment so high? I reckon the aging argument is trotted out by real estate interests to enable them to make more money.

[octave]

12 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

IF the aging of the populace is a problem ( I think its nonsense) then why is youth unemployment so high? I reckon the aging argument is trotted out by real estate interests to enable them to make more money.

What do you mean by youth?  Most 30 years are in employment and paying tax that supports the oldies.

[spacesailor]

The One generation that has Not contributed, Could be the Target !.

I see ' Infant sudden death syndrome ' is calling for More funds, to help stop the 100 or more Australian deaths. 

Come on you, ' Over population ' members!. here's a target that cannot fight back. should be easy, to get ALL the funds back into the  'general tax coffers'.

which target next ?.

It's not like your culling anyone, IT's nature, 

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

I do hope you're joking Spacey, it can be a bit hard to tell sometimes!

[Jerry_Atrick]

Re population growth, a couple of things:

- Even if the population growth has halved between 1970 and 2020, the absolute growth has remained relatively constant (simple mathematical deduction). In 1970 the world population was about 3.5bn. In 2020, it finished at something lilke 7.75bn.. 1.05% of world population growth out of 7.75bn will give you slightly more than 2% of 3.5bn.

 

- Using a % of world population is crude at best - I would argue it doesn't give the whole picture. The correlation that has to be taken into account is a percentage of the world's reproductive population - how many people today are under or over the age of reproductibility (I think I invented a new word). What we need to know is what is the data curve of the worlds reproductive population, and what % of that the population growth this.. that would be far more accurate - and then we need to cater for cultural differences - e.g. in western mature economies, people are having children later compared to less developed economies. 

 

- The next factor is life expectancy - but not absolute - but the rate of change (i.e. another curve - oh I do like curves!) In mature western economies, this has probably flatlined more or less.. But for the rest of the world, things are starting to take shape and medical/pharma companies are wanting to seek new markets and expand to the emerging economies.. where they have a bigger population, produce more kids because of mortality, etc etc. So, the delta curve on life expectancy can be expected to increase on an increasing gradient if not an exponential basis.

 

So each year, we are measuring population growth based on the total world population of the previous year. This hides the true impact, because we are measuring a rate of change against a cumulative expansion of the base population. This is one of the oldest statistics tricks in the book. So, no, the figures aren't a lie.. they are statistics.

 

The other thing to consider is that c. 1bn people in the world live in the mature western economies.. and therefore about 6.75bm people live in developing economies.. As technological and wealth changes to their advantage, two things will happen:

1) Life expectancy of about 85% of the worlds population will gradually increase - contributing to much higher populations that today

 

2) The % growth (net birth rate) will eventually decrease, but there will be a hell of a lot more reproductive people pumping out kids that survive - and the absolute number will increase dramatically...

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

OK, forgetting birth rates at the moment.. here is an example of what else has to be tackled:

 

As @octave's son says, what are we going to do about it? I had no idea Aus had that many frackijng wells... It is fracking nuts! Even the US have shut down a lot of them.

[Old Koreelah]

Depressing but true: the Morrison government has used the Covid crisis to throw public money at their fossil fuel sponsors, while leaving some of our biggest export earners, the education and tourism sectors to wither away.

[spacesailor]

Can,t wait for the next episode  !.

It was better than SBS, 

spacesailor

[Dax]

18 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

IF the aging of the populace is a problem ( I think its nonsense) then why is youth unemployment so high? I reckon the aging argument is trotted out by real estate interests to enable them to make more money.

The aging population isn't  problem, it's a political ploy, designed to cover up the complete incompetence of government to blame others for their gross stupidity.

 

Youth unemployment is also a political ploy, to cover up governments incompetence in not leading society in the right direction and providing policies which our alleviate any unemployment. The only aim of all governments is to appease their vested interests and keep themselves in power, so they can push their insane ideological agenda.

 

House prices like all prices only rise because of the demand economic profit growth and that can only be achieved by a boom and bust economy. They push prices up by growing the population, increasing commodity prices and restricting the ability to build cost effective homes, thus stifling any attempts to keep a lid on price rises. Then they raise interest rates sending people into debt, repossess and resell the houses for more profit, after making their money from the repossessed owners and the cycle starts again.

 

It's been going on since the 1970's and no one has woken up to how it works. When this housing boom busts, which it will soon as we've had a couple of years of stable low interest rates and they will raise them soon. Meaning tens of thousands will lose their homes to the banks, who will sell again to make more money and the cycle starts again. 

 

Until we get rid of the profit growth economy, it will only get worse until our society collapses in chaos.

[Dax]

3 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

while leaving some of our biggest export earners, the education and tourism sectors to wither away.

Problem is the education industry, is really a ploy to increase the population. Overseas students registering for university, are automatically allowed to stay here, whether they complete their course or not. Indians have been using that for years and now the Chinese have got on board. 

 

Our biggest export earners, should be value added products from our natural resources instead of sending it all overseas for us to pay for crap commodities. We have 60% of the world best lithium supplies, over 90% is sent to china so international mining companies can increase their short term profits and we get nothing of worth out of it, but expensive shoddy batteries. What happens when they have dug it all up.

[octave]

2 minutes ago, Dax said:

Problem is the education industry, is really a ploy to increase the population. Overseas students registering for university, are automatically allowed to stay here, whether they complete their course or not. Indians have been using that for years and now the Chinese have got on board. 

Sorry but that is simply not true, I know this through working with students who studied in this country and this did not automatically entitle them to residency.

[Old Koreelah]

1 minute ago, Dax said:

Problem is the education industry, is really a ploy to increase the population. Overseas students registering for university, are automatically allowed to stay here, whether they complete their course or not. Indians have been using that for years and now the Chinese have got on board. 

Maybe true, but Australia gains a whole generation of some other country’s best and brightest- and they pay their way.

They also tend to go on to be our future doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs, while lots of home-grown Aussies find striving at school and Uni a bit too hard.

1 minute ago, Dax said:

Our biggest export earners, should be value added products from our natural resources instead of sending it all overseas for us to pay for crap commodities…

Can’t argue with that, but try setting up a value-adding business in this country and you’ll probably end up disillusioned.

Bureaucratic red tape, shortage of skilled workers and short-term thinking of most investors…

[octave]

9 minutes ago, Dax said:

Our biggest export earners, should be value added products from our natural resources

 One of our biggest earners is education of overseas students which brought in 37.6 Billion dollars in 2019

[octave]

8 minutes ago, Dax said:

The aging population isn't  problem, it's a political ploy, designed to cover up the complete incompetence of government to blame others for their gross stupidity.

 Are you saying that the average age is not increasing?  Or are you saying it is, but it does not matter?

 

If you agree that is is (which it is) but it doesn't matter then I would be interested in how that works.     

 

An important figure for any country is the ratio of workers to non workers or to put it in a better way the ratio of tax payers to non tax payers.   As an extreme thought experiment if no more children were born and there was no immigration eventually the entire population would be of retirement age. The question would be how could that work?

 

Don't get me wrong I am not for increasing our population but all too often armchair experts proclaim that all we need to do is this one simple measure without considering unintended consequences.    We only had one child and he (31) does not intend to have children so I have done my bit.

 

Lets say that the population remains stable.  Eventually we have enough houses and buildings, this is a good thing in some ways although being a builder will be a rarer occupation.    The average age of many occupations will increase, again good in some ways. People in their 70s still have much to offer although I think I would be a little concerned if both the captain and first officer were septuagenarians.     Who is going to repair the roads and harvest the crops. 

 

I have just retired an so I do not contribute (by way of paid work and tax etc.) to society.   Eventually my super will run down and the tax payers will contribute to my age pension.  We cant pretend that these benefits  magically appear from nowhere.

 

I don't  know the answers but the one thing I do know is just closing the borders and reducing the birth rate would not be consequence free, nothing in life is that simple.

 

How Does Japan’s Aging Society Affect Its Economy?

[facthunter]

Till you take the profit out of deliberately lying we won't solve much. Nev

[Dax]

1 hour ago, octave said:

Sorry but that is simply not true, I know this through working with students who studied in this country and this did not automatically entitle them to residency.

My youngest daughter went through uni, she is now in a senior government job and told us that all her overseas friends from university all have permanent residency and they all happy, as that was their intent and now they are bringing family here. She says it's extremely common and I know through some of my business dealings that's the case.

 

As well as play in a band, I have a hospitality and entertainment business and in Tas, there are large numbers of indians who I know for fact never completed their courses and yet have been allowed to stay on with residency. Luckily most of the chinese were ordered home and most likely won't return, which is as goof thing for our country.

 

I'm not into statistics, they can and are manipulated to suit whatever outcome they want. The more people you have in the country students or otherwise, the more problems you have and student are allowed to work and take lots of casual jobs from Aussies. To be perfectly honest with you, I wouldn't let any overseas student into the country until all Australians are full educated and working. We don't need overseas money to fix this place, just good progressive policies representative of this century, not the last. The governments have almost priced Australians out of further education and many are in debt for many decades after.

[Dax]

1 hour ago, octave said:

Who is going to repair the roads and harvest the crops.

We already have automated harvesting and the same with road repairs, most of it is now automated to a big degree. As time goes on, more and more jibs will become automated, so having more people will be detrimental to our future. We already import about 90% of our processed food and as climate change bites us even more, good supplies will become a scarce commodity.

 

1 hour ago, octave said:

I don't  know the answers but the one thing I do know is just closing the borders and reducing the birth rate would not be consequence free, nothing in life is that simple.

Closing our borders to more residents will save our country, opening them to more tourists, will also save our country. Life is as simple as you want to make it, so the answers are simple, throw out all overseas corporations, nationalise resources and value add to everything in a controlled way. Continuing to look to the future with eyes stuck firmly in the past, is suicide and we are seeing the results starting to appear. That's our politicians and bureaucratic approach, don't change anything just keep clinging to the past.

[Dax]

2 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

They also tend to go on to be our future doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs, while lots of home-grown Aussies find striving at school and Uni a bit too hard.

That's because our education system is totally stuffed and purely orientated to turning our economic clones. I the current approach was successful, we wouldn't be looking down the barrel of sociological and environmental collapse.

 

You can't want change, yet keep what is killing the future and our country. This country is overpopulated, it's only capable of supporting around 10 million comfortably. The original inhabitants comfortably lived here for tens of thousands of years and kept the country in pristine condition. Ideological Europeans have been here just over 200 years and it's stuffed. How many more do you want to bring into this country when our ecology and environment are in a state of collapse, it makes no sense whatsoever.

 

There's an old saying, which no one takes any notice of, but it is true. You can have an environment without an economy, but you can't have an economy without an environment and that's how I have always approached life. I think of the environment first, whether it's natural, social or economic and without the right environment, it will fail.  the economy is a concept, not reality, the environment is reality, not a concept and ideologues have been pushing their concepts to the detriment of all environments, we are seeing the results of that insanity.

 

So how are you going to support all these people and more, without an sustainable environment. It's impossible and our current situation is proof of that reality. That;s why no one will do anything but more of the same and the results are clearly viewable right in front of our noses, our current societies and most humans will probably be extinct within ten years.

 

There have been many human cultures before this one, they all collapsed because they believed their approach was right and reality was wrong. But reality won and they got relegated to the past and they all went down in very short times, just like we are doing now. No amount of denial or clinging to the past will make one bit of difference, future is set in stone and can't be changed because everyone is waiting for someone else to do something and fix it.

Edited July 5, 2021 by Dax

[Old Koreelah]

7 hours ago, Dax said:

…I wouldn't let any overseas student into the country until all Australians are full educated and working.

Sadly, that is a pipe dream. History has shown that protectionism only leads to lowering standards and inefficiency.

 

I too would love to see all my locally-born countrymen fully educated and employed, but they have to want it!

During four decades in the education sector we battled to lift our kids’ educational aspirations, while the mainstream media immersed them in dreams of the easy life and making it big in sport. Too few of our kids will put in the years of work needed for many highly skilled careers; no wonder we import doctors from Africa.

 

Closing our borders means we’d miss out on thousands of talented, hardworking professionals who are the backbone of our technology sector. Australia has always imported people and ideas. Travel around Australia away from the coastal strip and you will find communities and whole industries that could not function without foreign backpackers.

 

7 hours ago, Dax said:

…The governments have almost priced Australians out of further education and many are in debt for many decades after.

I totally agree; my kid has worked for over a decade is still paying off her HECS. She’s lucky to work in the field for which she trained. Many never will, but still have to pay off a huge debt. With the accelerating pace of workplace change, no wonder kids are hesitant about committing to years of student debt to train for a career which may disappear before they graduate.

 

Governments could help by restoring funding to all levels of education, especially the Universities.

 

 

[Dax]

14 hours ago, Old Koreelah said:

Sadly, that is a pipe dream. History has shown that protectionism only leads to lowering standards and inefficiency.

Yet Aus until the 1970s ran on protectionism and had an excellent economy, massive industrial and small business base, great home affordability, excellent quality goods and services, housing affordability, plus very low unemployment and prices.

 

Now it's the opposite and they call that progress. Haven't our standards gone down dramatically this century, along with our governments, and services being extremely inefficient. We used to get building permits within 7 days and inspections on the day, now it takes months to get a building or renovation permit. Now they use private building inspectors and look at the results of that, many new homes and buildings have shoddy work, inferior materials and bad workmanship.